GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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Mondo Backup

Debian Packages: mondo mondo-doc

Mondo can be used to backup to DVD. We illustrate a recipe here.

First test things out with:

  # mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I /etc -gF

This will generate a bootable DVD that also backs up /etc. You can boot from this DVD and then recover files. Alternatively, and more typically, you can recover files running mondorestore. This starts up a basic interface to select files to be recovered.

All of the operation of mondoarchive is controlled by command line options. The -O option says to do a backup, and the -V says to verify the backup. The -r option indicates that a DVD is to be used as the backup media, with /dev/dvd as the device specified with the -d option. The -9 requests the highest level of compression, -g requests the GUI mode, and -F removes a unnecessary request to write a boot floppy.

We can now backup our whole /home and /etc directories. You can specify what to backup on the command line:

  # mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I "/etc /home" -gF

And you can refine this by specifying those directories you do not want backed up:

  # mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I "/etc /home" \
    -E "/home/share /home/kayon/mp3" -gF

Note that the backups will start to take some time - likely to be several hours depending on how much is to be backed up.

One strategy might be to create several backups, each of a specific area of about the size that will fit onto the DVD (compressed). Then cycle through these backup regions, always keeping two backups (the current and the previous).

Subsections

• Troubleshooting